Christopher L. Wildfire
CHRISTOPHER L. WILDFIRE is a partner with Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP, with extensive experience in the workers’ compensation field.
His litigation practice concentrates on representing insurance carriers, self-insured employers and third-party administrators defending claims for occupationally induced cardiopulmonary (silicosis, pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, industrial bronchitis, cor pulmonale, etc.) and other diseases, disorders caused by chemical and other toxic exposures, traumatic (orthopedic/musculoskeletal/neurologic) injuries, psychoses and work-related stress, occupational hearing loss and other industrial conditions. He cross-examines physician-specialists on a regular basis. He is regularly involved at the Workers' Compensation Judge, Workers' Compensation Appeal Board, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court and Pennsylvania Supreme Court levels. Mr. Wildfire has also successfully defended numerous federal black lung benefits applications nationally before the U.S. Department of Labor, the Office of Administrative Law Judges, the Benefits Review Board and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Wildfire regularly participates as a faculty member and writer for continuing education seminars pertaining to various Pennsylvania workers’ compensation legal and procedural topics, federal black lung practice, insurance defense/administrative law practice, appellate practice and medical updating, with a special emphasis on pneumoconiosis and associated pathology, pulmonary clinical testing, radiology, traumatic and repetitive injuries and otolaryngology. He has served as an attorney panelist for an American College of Radiology seminar concerning the pneumoconioses, and a defense attorney panelist for an Office of Administrative Law Judges symposium. He presented a hearing loss segment for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute on “Tough Problems in Workers’ Compensation Cases,” and several other CLE programs in the fields of occupational disease, otolaryngology, subrogation and fraud, as well as medico-legal topics for physicians.
A 1978 cum laude graduate of Dickinson College, Mr. Wildfire received his law degree from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1981. He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, West Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, and the U.S. Court of Veterans Appeals. He is a member of the Pennsylvania and American Bar Associations and their Workers’ Compensation Sections, the Bar Association of the Third Federal Circuit, the Pennsylvania Self-Insurers' Association, and the Pittsburgh Claims Association. Mr. Wildfire is a past Chairman of the Allegheny County Bar Association’s Workers’ Compensation Section.